Hey, I can't resist a challenge.
Mods
-Bobbi Special Doctor House
-Fog-B-Gone
-No Wind
-that's all (I'd use Irrelevant Tweak Crop, but I'm not going to do any farming in this town.)
Map
Year 1
Gatherer
Hunter
Chopper
BH
School
Year 2
Forester
Barn
Smith
Year 3
Tailor
Herbalist
Year 4
Second BH
(Note the hunter production) ;)
@Nilla I just realized with this start that the natural forest node pairs are Forester/Hunter, and Gatherer/Herbalist. Foresters tend to interfere with the production of the Gatherer and Herbalist, but Hunters don't care; Gatherers and Herbalists thrive under similar conditions; you could put a Hunter with them as well.
I still can't believe how you do that. (I mean the hunter). Mine usually shoot 2. :-\
Maybe you also have more luck with the boarding houses than I have. I play that challenge, too. I am only a bit too lazy to blog it. I'm almost done, maybe another 8-10 years to go. I also do it without farming, and just for fun without a trading port. I am trying to expand it fast, but I can't. It develops, but very slow and I don't have the patience to really micromange it well. I think you might be the right person for this. I'm really looking forward, to see how you do this.
Quote from: Nilla on March 07, 2015, 01:48:07 AM
I still can't believe how you do that. (I mean the hunter). Mine usually shoot 2. :-\
I was doing some comparisons the other day sparked by the fact in some maps my hunters just can't keep a tailor supplied and on others they create a surplus of leather. I remember from some time back a discussion of hunters on another forum in which someone concluded that there were spawn points for deer. I think that sometimes we just get lucky and place a hunter very near a spawn point and sometime we don't. Beyond that I could never find any difference between locations that perform well and locations that perform poorly.
I just look for where the herds are grazing. They will always return to these locations (don't know if it's the same herd each time or not). I think these also are the spawning points. I place my cabins so there are at least two of these in the circle.
Quote from: Nilla on March 07, 2015, 01:48:07 AM
Maybe you also have more luck with the boarding houses than I have. I play that challenge, too. I am only a bit too lazy to blog it. I'm almost done, maybe another 8-10 years to go. I also do it without farming, and just for fun without a trading port. I am trying to expand it fast, but I can't. It develops, but very slow and I don't have the patience to really micromange it well. I think you might be the right person for this. I'm really looking forward, to see how you do this.
The BHs do take some fussing around to get the kids all to hook up. I had to close each of these briefly 2-3 times, sometimes singly, sometimes at the same time, to finally get them all paired off. I made sure I had a good amount of food banked first, of course. And in 2-3 months there were 7 new children.
Quote from: irrelevant on March 07, 2015, 09:09:32 AM
The BHs do take some fussing around to get the kids all to hook up. I had to close each of these briefly 2-3 times, sometimes singly, sometimes at the same time, to finally get them all paired off. I made sure I had a good amount of food banked first, of course. And in 2-3 months there were 7 new children.
This is exactly what i mean. That it's not enough to try it once. With 1,2,3 boarding houses it's somehow OK, but I have 40(!) of them. And I definitely don't have patience enough to find mates for everyone there. My tactic; each summer I make a big coupling action: Pause the game, demolish every house, turn the game on for some seconds, pause the game, undo the demolishing. A lot of new couples are found, but there are also a lot of young singles that rather stay at their parents. :-\
I know, this is not a really good approach, but that's the only way I found, to make it playable for me. :)
And to the deers: I sometimes have 3 herds where I put my hunter. Result: 2 deer each year for one hunter. ???
Good to see that you are enjoying the challenge. As for pairing up: It will be fun to see the different approaches here. The deer you see are purely ornamental still, right?
Quote from: kee on March 07, 2015, 11:05:08 AM
Good to see that you are enjoying the challenge. As for pairing up: It will be fun to see the different approaches here. The deer you see are purely ornamental still, right?
Nope. They are walking food and leather. A hunter walks up to one and does his hunter dance; the deer vanishes, two meats and a hide appear on the ground, and the cabin gets credit for 200 meat and 6 leather. Exactly the same thing that happens to cattle in a pasture.
The challenge is fun and, uh, challenging. ;D
Unfortunately I won't get much game time for a few days here.
Quote from: irrelevant on March 06, 2015, 08:38:26 PM
I just realized with this start that the natural forest node pairs are Forester/Hunter, and Gatherer/Herbalist. Foresters tend to interfere with the production of the Gatherer and Herbalist, ...
This is interesting. Is this just the forester lodge taking up space in the gatherer/herbalist circle, or do foresters dig up the others' resources as they plant? It seems like the conventional approach from way back was to use foresters and herbalists together since the idea was that herbs grow best in old forest. I'm not sure that was ever really shown to be true ... maybe it's just a Banished legend.
This is an interesting topic.
@irrelevant , I think you are right..... and...... wrong with this assumption!
I mean (from my experience):
Gatherer (and herbalists) produce more if they are by themselves, than together with a forester if..............
the forester is high productive but.........
they produce more, if the forester is low productive/only planting.
I think the main reason to put forester, gatherers and hunters together, is the reason that they all need space and space is a limiting factor in this game. At least this is my reason. If I really need high productive gatherers, I try to use the neighbour foresters to produce a thick, productive forest. I don't think
@irrelevant that you can hold on to the separation of those, when your game grows bigger. But please prove me wrong.
@salamander @Nilla I believe (and I have not studied this carefully enough to know for sure, this is just my impression) that both herbs and forest food sprout only in proximity to trees that are at least 4 years old.
Foresters set to cut will harvest trees once they reach 4 years old.
The "4 years old" condition may not be strictly accurate for any of these items, but I believe very strongly that these mechanisms are something very similar to what I describe.
Therefore, a forester set to cut will be reducing future harvests of herbs and forest food. If he is also set to plant, he may be able to cancel out somewhat the detrimental effect of his cutting. However, I have noticed that an herbalist next to a forester set to cut and plant will have diminishing herb returns to the point of zero. That tells me it is possible that herbs may need trees even older than 4 years to sprout under, maybe 5, 6, or even 7 years.
The bad thing is that trees tend to die after they reach 7 years. So to help the gatherer/herbalist max out, you should give them a forester set to plant only. The problem with this is that such a forester can easily create a forest so dense that there is no longer any space available for herbs/forest food to sprout under them! Maybe the trick here is to use just a single forester at the hut.
tldr; forests are very sensitive ecosystems. They definitely bear study that is difficult to undertake in the middle of building a town.
Year 5 - needed another barn, me and my surplus food. Speaking of, need more food! A second gatherer with the hunter/forester pair. Planning the third BH.
Year 6 - a second forester with the original gatherer/herbalist pair. Set to plant only for now.
Year 7 - cemetery, cause we all gotta go sometime.
Year 8 - third BH done. Getting new families to form is a chore, as
@Nilla has described. Multiple BH closings and re-openings. Demolished the original chopper and built a new one near the market. I have decided that I will do this town without trading posts; since I'm not going to farm, what's the point? A new forester will work to establish a new forest node in the erstwhile TP clearing.
Year 9 - two new foresters, two new hunters off the top edge of the screen. But what?? Nearly ran out of both tools and coats! :-[ ;D
Year 10 - second settlement begun.
edit: this site is not letting me upload any images tonight. I'll try again later, or tomorrow. :-X
Year 13 - Food is maxxed, more barns!
Year 14 - I forgot to build a Town Hall!!
Year 15 - More barns; fixing up new couples in BHs is a major hassle!
Year 16 - a third BH on the right-hand (northern) market, then it will be time to expand to the south. Also thinking of getting an iron mine and a quarry built off to the east somewhere.
Again, not uploading image files.
Quote from: irrelevant on March 09, 2015, 08:27:13 PM
Again, not uploading image files.
I see the image files attached to the post and can click on them to enlarge them.
Quote from: rkelly17 on March 10, 2015, 09:56:35 AM
Quote from: irrelevant on March 09, 2015, 08:27:13 PM
Again, not uploading image files.
I see the image files attached to the post and can click on them to enlarge them.
Oops, that was last night.
Year 17 - more storage, moremoremore!
Year 18 - starting the southern expansion, Village Three.
What this challenge doesn't use very much of: firewood, stone, logs, food (because the BH stores less food than 5 houses would).
What this challenge needs lots of : storage and patience.
I am surprised by how fast this town has amassed its stock of stored food. I keep bumping up against both the production and storage limits.
Village One
Village Two
Village Three - showing what is stored in 6 BHs
Year 21
Took a batch of nomads (I have planted a TP footprint just for this purpose). I have two well-sited hospitals, and in this town I have excess of everything, including housing. Let's push it!
Year 25 - pop 131
Village 1 - now working a mine and a quarry. I have numerous happiness circles buffering the village. Someone on Reddit has claimed that the circles of the mine and quarry detract from health rather than from happiness.
@RedKetchup, do you have any opinion on this?
Village 2
Village 3 - provision for the next BH, although I will probably opt to start a new Village 4 to the south, on the far side of the forest node there on the right edge. Village 5 will probably be across the river.
quote from quarry :
HappinessDescription happiness
{
HappinessType _happinessType = Detraction;
int _idleRange = 0;
}
and quote from Mine:
HappinessDescription happiness
{
HappinessType _happinessType = Detraction;
}
it is stated in the 'hapiness' title. without any mention about health so ... i really dunno where from the 'health thing' they are talking about :S
@RedKetchup, that's great; merci mon ami!
Year 35 - pop 305, on track for 450-500 by year 50.
Villages 1-5; new village 5 across the river.
Took my final batch of nomads in year 33 (don't want to dilute the ending educated %, bad enough that I have to keep shuffling the BH residence deck which results in long student commutes).
Happiness and health both have taken a 1/2 star hit the past couple of years. Not enough cemeteries, and I guess I was sending laborers out too much to work in cold weather. That's the only thing I can figure cause there's plenty of herbs and coats. With no farms and no trade a balanced diet is impossible, but I have had 5 hearts for the past 10-15 years.... ??? :-\
Village 6 is going to go back in the sticks.
Year 42
New Villages 6 & 7. The next (and likely last) village is going off to the right.
I should be able to finish this up in a couple of hours; unfortunately I won't be able to get back to it until Sunday afternoon or evening. No way to top
@Nilla's excellent town, I didn't start my pop push soon enough for that. ;)
edit: I forgot, had a Small Pox outbreak, good hospital placement helped me nip it at patient zero 8) That, and Bobbi Special Doctor House.
Year 50 - pop 484
Was really wanting to get to 500; I just didn't realize what was really necessary to push the pop hard. To truly max it out you would need to close all the BHs at least 2x/year. And that would really interfere with the education situation. My schools were very poorly placed; I had one in each village but I would have fared far better had I located them all together in the center of the map. That would have insured that no students would have had crazy long walks ever. As it was I finished up with a number of female students between 16-25 years old, and that is just counterproductive for pop growth.
Might even have been better off to forgo education entirely for the first 25 years or so. I was never in a situation where I was short of anything (except for the one time early on when I forgot to restart my smith and tailor and got down to just a couple each of coats and tools). :o ;D
Villages 1 - 8
It's nice entry. I'm sorry you didn't read the discussion between
@rkelly17 and me at the challenge-thread about the schools. I located them at the center of the map. It was probably better than at each village, but
@rkelly17´s suggestion is better. I was hoping you would try that.
Otherwise, I think we had about the same strategy. Why do I have more people? I didn't even take any nomads. Except the location of the schools; I am sure; it's the start. At the beginning, I made a lot of experiments, trying to get the couples together. And for about the first 100 inhabitants, I also got every possible couple together. After that, I gave it up and made one big coupling action each year. But if you want to grow fast, the beginning is important. I don't have any saves or screenshots from the beginning, but it looks like I had my first 100 people at about year 15. You were later there. That's the big difference. It would probably have been hard to catch up, even if you had closed the boarding houses several times each year.
I also built more boarding houses, than I really needed. As soon as I got 50 families, I built boardinghouse number 11 and maybe even number 12, and so on, even if some houses would be empty for a while. I can see at your pictures, that you generally have less boardinghouses than possible families. That might also be a reason.
@Nilla the funny thing is, I did read that, but I was too dense to understand how it would work and what it would mean until just now. :-\ I remember thinking, "well, that won't work, they'll just become uneducated." Duh. Only one uneducated was me! ;)
I was stingy with the BHs, but I'm pretty sure that I never had families fail to form because of lack of BH space. I had noticed that the Town Hall's number of families would drop significantly each time I closed then re-opened the BHs. Each time that number dropped under the BHx5 limit. Whenever it got close, I built a couple more BHs, or a new village.
You're right about the need to have high pop in mind from the start. That idea applies equally to every Banished town.
I think as an experiment I will go back a few years and see how much difference I can make by trying the school thing.
Year 40 - pop 357
So here's the change: building 4 schools to take up the displaced students.
Going to do this: SAVE THE GAME FIRST!
2x/year (if I can manage it) demolish the BHs. Demo them all, then recover, (you don't have to wait until everyone is back housed, just mostly), then demo/recover them all again.
Then once everyone is settled in, pause again.
Open and staff the overflow schools. Don't forget to assign teachers to the overflow schools after you open them.
Now close the regular schools and reduce the number of teachers. Be careful not to click too many times (yes, I did)! Unpause. Then pause again, open the regular schools, assign teachers, close the overflow schools, and unpause. Unassign the extra teachers.
This is the only change I am going to make to what I did the last 10 years in Bugtussle, except that I will build more BHs if they are required.
Year 50 - pop 626
Well, I'd say that worked pretty well :D Really interesting what a difference a couple of tweaks can make.
Tedious as hell, though; ten years (that I already had played once) took 4 hours.
Had to build some more fishers, hunters, and gatherers, food demand went through the roof. Unsustainable town without farms.
Might be hard to believe, but that truly is all I changed.
@Nilla @salamander @rkelly17 @Brugle thanks for the very interesting discussion/suggestions! Going to remember this one for sure.
I'm somewhere in year 28 at the moment, so I may give this a try with the schools, if I have the resources to build the extras. With all the BH shuffling, I've seen quite a few students up around 19 and 20 years old ... more than I think I've ever noticed before. Could really make a difference over the remaining 22 years, if I can keep up with the food.
I guess there's a good thing to being the tail end of the cow as far as completing this challenge -- I keep getting all the benefits of your,
@Nilla's and
@Bracken's work. ;)
Very interesting that it worked that well, I´m glad you tried it.
Congratulations! :D